Friday roundup

Friday, March 23rd, 2012

Friday roundup:

Writing in the spring issue of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Yale law professor Heather K. Gerken argues that liberals should take a more favorable view of federalism, if simply because a more decentralized system would provide a greater voice on the local level to minorities and political dissenters. She notes: “State and local governments have become sites of empowerment for racial minorities and dissenters, the groups that progressives believe have the most to fear from decentralization. In fact, racial minorities and dissenters can wield more electoral power at the local level than they do at the national. And while minorities cannot dictate policy outcomes at the national level, they can rule at the state and local level. Racial minorities and dissenters are using that electoral muscle to protect themselves from marginalization and promote their own agendas.”George Mason law professor Ilya Somin and AEI’s Jonah Goldberg have optimistic responses at the Volokh Conspiracy blog and National Review Online, respectively.

The Sunlight Foundation announced earlier this month that its Open States Project now has information available for all 50 states, plus Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico, making it the “first and only completely open, completely free resource for accessing legislative information in a uniform format across all 50 states.” Check it out here.